New method developed to find hot sub-dwarf stars

Jan 11, 2018 (4 months ago)

IANS

Beijing, Jan 11 : Chinese researchers have developed a new method to find over 10,000 potential hot sub-dwarf stars, a kind of star with a helium-burning core, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) said.

Researchers at the CAS National Astronomical Observatories used a new machine-learning algorithm to categorize hot sub-dwarf stars from data provided by the LAMOST telescope, Xinhua reported.

Compared with traditional search methods using photometric data, the new method is more accurate and efficient and requires less time, the CAS said.

The finding is expected to tremendously expand the number of hot sub-dwarf star samples and provide quality spectrum data for future study of the stars, according to the CAS.

The formation of hot sub-dwarf stars and their characteristics are important for studying stellar physics, globular clusters and galaxies. Currently, only a limited number of hot sub-dwarf stars are known by humans.

China's LAMOST, short for Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope, has the potential to search for a number of hot sub-dwarf stars.

The finding has been published by The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series.